while flickr has been having issues, i’ve been getting behind on posting updates. so for now, i’ll just post the super abridged version and maybe i’ll get around to posting the longer version when time permits. you can see annotated photos from the day here.

his docs took him off caffeine today, which was helping him to remember to breathe, which means that they think he’s at risk for having anymore “apneas of prematurity” ( he could still have feeding related apnic episodes, however ). he didn’t have any alarms during the day which means that he probably won’t go home with a monitor that measures his heartrate and respiration. in other words, he’ll go home without any wires!

eric had another visit from his grandparents, which he enjoyed quite a bit.

laaater:

another visit from grandma snowdeal! strange – her eyes aren’t red anymore 🙂 she demonstrates a superb ability to keep eric from refluxing so she’ll definitely be getting lots of holding time in the future.

and whenever you find grandma snowdeal, grandpa usually isn’t far behind. i’d use the old, eric watching eric watching eric line, but i used that one.

on the day before his three month birthday, they decide to take him off his daily dose of caffeine, which is supposed to help him to remember to breath ( i never really understood why caffeine does what it does, but someday maybe i’ll look it up ). he didn’t have a single alarm after the sudden withdrawal ( i might have an alarm or two if somebody decided to suddenly take away my caffeine )! since he’s not having any alarms that are due to what’s know as “apnea of prematurity” ( as opposed to feeding-related apnic episodes ), they will probably decide to send him home without a monitor, which means he’ll go home without any wires!

the device in the picture is the home monitor that he would have gone home with. he’s been hooked up to it since he arrived, in addition to his other monitors, just to make sure it works well. it makes the most ear bursting sounds if he has an apnic episode, since it’s designed to alert you even if your on the other side of the house. when you’re sitting right next to it, you’d swear that your ears might start bleeding if it goes off for an extended period of time.

i never get tired of seeing how good he’s getting at keeping the supersized paci in his mouth all by himself.

he’s nearing his three month birthday old (actual age, technically, he’s still not supposed to be out the womb for two weeks), so i guess it makes sense that his motor skills and coordination are really beginning to take off.

eric is clasping his hands, content after a bottle, while kris is resting her hand on his chest. you can see the ever present supersized paci in the background.

Conflux :: A Confluence of Curiousness

i’m not sure how to square these findings with the fact that i’ve long said that in a parallel universe very close to our own i live alone in cabin in the middle of nowhere writing manifestos: “The effect of population density on life satisfaction was therefore more than twice as large for low-IQ individuals than for high-IQ individuals,” they found. And “more intelligent individuals were actually less satisfied with life if they socialized with their friends more frequently.”

the heart warming fable of thanksgiving, unsurprisingly, ends up being a whole lot more complicated than some of us were taught and answers the nagging question of how squanto spoke perfect english when the pilgrims arrived and what was happening during the 100 year interim between columbus and the pilgrims ( spoiler: it involves human trafficking, enslavement and villages being wiped out ). and if you’re a stickler for tradition, you should put ditch the turkey and cranberry sauce for salted pork and olives since the spanyiards were the first to celebrate thanksgiving 50 years before the pilgrims.

“…researchers from a Bosch startup called Deepfield Robotics presented a paper on “Vision-Based High-Speed Manipulation for Robotic Ultra-Precise Weed Control,” which has like four distinct exciting-sounding phrases in it.”IEEE Spectrum

after updating to iOS 9 and el capitan i’ve been having troubles synching photos from my iphone to my macbook air. the mac would recognize the iphone but no photos would show up in the photos application or image capture. it was driving me nuts. turns out, if you have non-apple services like dropbox running that sync your photos to non-icloud services you have to turn them off.

having run a half a dozen marathons, i can’t imagine finishing in 3:05. even more unimaginable in full amish garb so kudos to leroy stolzfus. the whole article is great read but now i want to know more of the backstory on why he started to run: “A few years ago, Stolzfus got “involved with some stuff” he said he shouldn’t have. His brother-in-law suggested he start running instead when he was tempted. He took the suggestion to heart, and went out for a run.”

huh, who knew edward tufte has a farm with 234-acres of landscape sculpture fields that he opens to the public once a year. i’d love to make a trip. and i also love the article’s description of tufte, “[he] is also known as a genius of data visualization, professor emeritus of political science, statistics, and computer science at Yale, an author of books on information design, and a hater of PowerPoint.

“The Chagossian people have a word, in their Creole language, for heartbreak: sagren. It is a profound sorrow which refers to the loss of a home, and the impossibility of returning to it. As we build new worlds with our technologies, knitted from fiber-optic light and lines of code, it is incumbent on us to ensure it does not reproduce the erasures and abuses of the old, but properly accounts for the rights and liberties of every one of us.”citizen-ex